Upload
others
View
22
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
2
Table of Contents
Introduction
Direct Energy
Cognizant-DE Engagement Snapshot
Ongoing Projects
Completed projects
Cognizant Initiatives
3
Introduction
Browse through following pages, to find a catalog of all the Cognizant-DE associations. At your
perusal are the details of all the projects that Cognizant took responsibility for, circumstances
before Cognizant came into the picture, a brief about the project and the associates working on the
project.
Our onsite representatives, supported by the backbone of our offshore associates, have effortlessly
bridged the gap between Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore thus defining the essence of
Outsourcing and the journey of Cognizant’s relationship with DE. This document also details some
of the key innovations and initiatives undertaken by the Cognizant DE Team.
4
DIRECT ENERGY
Direct Energy is wholly owned by Centrica plc, one of the world’s leading integrated energy
companies. In 2013, Centrica served over 30 million customers on both sides of the Atlantic,
operated in seven countries with over 34,000 employees and posted revenues of £26.6bn. Centrica
plc was formed in February 1997 as a result of the Demerger of British Gas plc into Centrica plc
and BG plc. Centrica holds an A- Credit rating (S&P) and a Moody’s Senior Unsecured A3 rating,* is
a Top 30 FTSE 100 company** and a global Fortune 500® company,** and trades on the London
Stock Exchange (CNA).
Direct Energy is one of North America’s largest competitive energy suppliers of electricity, natural
gas and related services. By investing in energy efficiency and innovation, as well as delivering
choices in a variety of retail electricity and natural gas products to home- and business-owners,
Direct Energy is supporting the development of tomorrow’s energy markets today. With
approximately 6,000 employees, we are active in small and medium business; C&I retail business;
as well as home services to ensure we’ll be a stable, long-term partner to the millions of customers
we serve both in the United States and Canada. And by securing innovative partners that offer
products such as the Nest Learning Thermostat, Honeywell Smart Thermostat and Smart Things™,
Direct Energy is on the cutting edge of new energy saving efforts ,
Headquartered in Houston, 12 Greenway Plaza Suite 600 Houston , TX 77046
Direct energy has offices in 46 U.S. states and 10 Canadian provinces.
Direct Energy’s 2014 gross revenues totaled around $19.5 billion.
6 million customer base is the US and Canada
Largest residential energy retailer in North America & Third largest commercial & industrial
retailer in NA
It generates power via natural gas-fired power plants and wind-turbine facilities in Texas,
along with extensive upstream operations in Alberta.
In 2013, Direct Energy produced US$11.4 billion in revenues with an operating profit of US$436 million
Houston Business Journal named Direct Energy as one of the healthiest places in the city to work in 2013, among companies with between 500 and 1,500 employees in the area
Direct Energy has been a proud sponsor of the Volunteer Citizen of the Year award in cities across the country, recognizing local leaders for their contributions to their communities
Along with Pittsburgh Magazine, Direct Energy launched the first-ever Small Business
Community Heroes award to honor small business owners’ efforts to make their city a better
place. This program has expanded across the Northeast.
https://www.directenergy.com/
A History of Impressive Growth as one of North America’s largest competitive energy
retailers.
5
Direct Energy operates in 10 Canadian provinces and 46 U.S. states plus the District of
Columbia, with more than 6 million customer relationships.
6
DE Operations:
In North America, Direct Energy operates under three lines of business.
Direct Energy Business: For commercial and industrial customers (small, medium and
large-sized businesses, government, public institutions and national accounts), Natural gas
and electricity contracts, along with energy efficiency management and services.
Key facts:
o The largest commercial and industrial retailer in North America based on customer
numbers.
o Natural gas and electricity sales to small, medium and large-size businesses, public
institutions and government.
o Products available in five Canadian provinces and 14 U.S. states, plus the District of
Columbia
Direct Energy Residential: For residential customers, Natural gas and electricity pricing
plans with fixed and variable priced options of varying term lengths. Innovative products
that help control home energy usage, such as the Nest Learning Thermostat, Honeywell
Smart Thermostat and Smart Things.
Key facts:
o Largest residential energy retailer in North America based on customer numbers.
o Innovative products to help manage home energy usage, such as the Nest Learning
Thermostat™
o Honeywell Smart Thermostat and Smart Things.
o Natural gas and electricity pricing plans with fixed and variable price options of
varying term lengths
o Products available in two Canadian provinces and eight U.S. states
Direct Energy Services: For both residential and commercial/industrial customers, our
affiliates, Mr. Sparky, One Hour and Ben Franklin, offer services including HVAC (heating,
ventilation, air conditioning) installation and service, plumbing, water heaters, protection
plans, building automation, facility maintenance, energy audits and energy management
consulting services. We also offer business management and operational counselling to
independent home services contractors.
Key facts:
o One of the largest home services companies in North America
o HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) installation and service, plumbing,
water heaters, protection plans, building automation, facility maintenance, energy
audits and energy management consulting services. Offers business management
and operational counseling to independent home services contractors
o Products and services available in 10 Canadian provinces and 46 U.S. states, plus
the District of Columbia
9
Family of Brands: Direct Energy
Key Points:
WTU: Fixed rates, variable plans, green energy, prepaid, or even natural gas-sourced
electricity plans.
FCP : Offers customers a range of electricity plans with competitive prices designed in
Texas for DER and DEB
CPL : Offers fixed rates, variable plans, green energy, prepaid, and even natural gas-
sourced electricity plans
Bounce energy :Low competitive rates in New York
10
NYSEG Solutions : Provides electricity and natural gas supply, green energy, Renewable
Energy Credits (RECs), and energy related products and services to customers
Energet!x : Provides electricity, natural gas, and clean energy solutions to DER & DEB in
NY.
Newleaf : Renewable energy to billing options, green energy, eco-friendly billing options-
including Auto-Pay and Paperless
Gateway : To DER & DEB deregulated markets customers across Kentucky, Maryland, New
Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and the District of Columbia
Vectren source :One of the largest retail providers of electricity, natural gas, and home
services in NA
11
Cognizant-DE Engagement Snapshot
Cognizant entered the DE Business space after the acquisition of HEM
• Cognizant’s engagement with DER is since 2005
• The key services offered to DER so far are application development, support and maintenance,
Mobile app development strategy, BI assessment etc.
• Currently from Cognizant the strength of employees working for DE at both shores is in the
range of around 95+
• In October 2013, DE acquired Hess Energy marketing business (HEM) whom Cognizant has
had the prior engagement with.
Cognizant presence in Direct energy
DE Operations Cognizant Present Active Project Name
Direct Energy Residential Yes
DER - Tulsa Production Support
Texas Platform Consolidation
Tibco Production Support
US North production Support
DE - Digital Transformation
MIS App Support
DE Houston DW Development
DE Residential-Functional Testing
Tableau Upgrade & Dashboard Development
DER Functional testing
IT IS DBA
DE Functional Testing
Direct Energy Business Yes
DEB-HEM Pricing Systems
DEB-HEM Datamart
DEB-HEM Billing Interface Sys
DEB-HEM Scheduling-Trading
DEB-HEM Testing Services
DEB-HEM MDM
DEB Risk Warehouse
DE SFDC Training
DEB Apollo Modernization
Direct Energy Services No NA
12
Ongoing Projects
Tulsa Production Support
Business Unit:
MLEU
Customer Contact
Mantle, Jon
Project description
Direct Energy has a suite of IT applications on a variety of technologies that assist and propel the
business in both strategic and operational directions. This includes consolidated PEACE 8.08
application of Direct Energy’s residential and small commercial customers in the state of Texas and
Peace Ontario applications.
Scope of the services is as follows,
Job monitoring activities (Texas and Ontario)
Application access control
Analysis on incident ticket on the following areas
o Non-Peace – Interfaces ( Texas and Ontario)
o Batch applications
o Online applications
o Ancillary applications
o Ontario Ancillary applications
o Service oriented applications
o Reports via Reporting Framework
Enhancement Activities includes
o Code development
o Unit testing
Providing support for Quality Assurance
o Component testing.
o Fully Integration testing.
Gathering Infrastructure requirements and documentation.
Project implementation and Go-live activities.
Post Go-live support.
Production support Hand over document
Technology used
Item Name Software
Operating System Windows
Database Oracle 11
Application Server IIS
Technologies ASP.NET 3.5, JSP, Web services, Struts, Core
Java
Tools WinSCP, PuTTY, Visual studio, Soap UI, Eclipse
Key benefits
13
A highly robust and scalable integration platform for integration between
systems
Clear visibility on the monitoring and tracking the market transactions
Enhanced Efficiency by reducing Manual intervention across failure points with the
introduction of reconciliation process
Stabilization of production interfaces by drilling down the issue root case and
provide permanent solution
Proactive monitoring on the production components and effective action prior to
the customer impact thru alerting
Associates involved in the project
Onsite:
Vinod Kumar Nakka
Offshore:
Arkaprovo Basak
Shahul Hameed Raja Abdul Razack
Sudhakar Joseph Solomon
Ranjan RamanujamVijayaraghavan
Priyavashini N
14
Texas Platform Consolidation
Business Unit:
MLEU
Customer Contact
Mantle, Jon
Project description
Direct Energy has a suite of IT applications on a variety of technologies that assist and propel the
business in both strategic and operational directions. This includes consolidated PEACE 8.08
application of Direct Energy’s residential and small commercial customers in the state of Texas and
Peace Ontario applications.
Scope of the services is as follows,
Analysis on new requirements and Change Requests on the following areas
o Non-Peace – Interfaces ( Texas and Ontario)
o Batch applications
o Online applications
o Ancillary applications
o Ontario Ancillary applications
o Service oriented applications
o Reports via Reporting Framework
Development Activities includes
o Design document creation (Software Design Specification)
o Code development
o Unit testing
Providing support for Quality Assurance
o Component testing.
o Fully Integration testing.
o Third party vendor testing.
o User Acceptance testing.
o Resolution of defects identified during the QA
Gathering Infrastructure requirements and documentation.
Project implementation and Go-live activities.
Post Go-live support.
Production support Hand over document
15
Technology used
Item Name Software
Operating System Windows
Database Oracle 11
Application Server IIS
Technologies ASP.NET 3.5, JSP, Web services, Struts, Core
Java
Tools WinSCP, PuTTY, Visual studio, Soap UI, Eclipse
Major projects (Peace Interfaces, Online applications)
FISERV
Direct Energy currently uses third party vendor FIS to transmit, collect and store CC information.
With this project, Direct Energy will now be transitioning from FIS to Fiserv all its payment
processing activities. Walk-in vendor functionality with Fiserv will continue to be maintained.
Fiserv will be used to transmit, collect and store customer related credit card information
Fiserv will be used to process daily recurring credit card payments
Fiserv will also able to receive real time payments and utilize Direct Energy API(s) to post
real time in peace.
Auto Pay customer accounts will be created in Fiserv that will have an account number
which matches the DE Customers debtor number stored in CIS
The debtor number will therefore be the link between DE customer information and Fiserv
CC information for that customer
Fiserv is the system of record for CC information
DE is the system of record for all other customer information
Account summary tool
This tool is used to view the customer account summary details such as account summary,
statement summary and tariff summary. This tool will allow the back office people to send
these details as PDF to customer EMAIL ID.
Time of Use (TOU)
This interface will process the interval usage information from smart meter repository
database of an ESI ID for a service period and generating a file using the interval data. And
there is an dashboard, which will process the given ESI ID , service period details and free
power day to display the sum of interval usage information as well as a download option to
get the interval data in a file.
QA web tool
To cross verify the amount in PEACE tables against the invoice generated to customer.
User will enter the amount which is in invoice PDF in the tool against the Invoice #.
Difference between the PEACE value and the value entered is not 0, then the amount in the
invoice PDF is wrong. So again the invoice should generate with the correct amount as per
the reading.
16
InAdvertent Switch Application (IAS)
Inadvertent Switch Application is used by DE users to track the status of the IAS Issues.
An Inadvertent switch could happen simply by someone accidentally providing an incorrect
address when setting up electricity service.
These are created as IAS issues & being tracked in IAS application until it is resolved.
IAS issues that are logged in Peace are staged into IAS tables and displayed in the front
end.
Users can edit the IAS details & change the IAS status.
This application also generates report & provides the detailed view of the open & closed
tickets.
Key challenges/Learnings
Getting knowledge on PEACE tables.
Learned to export a whole page into excel format. The page contains a grid view with
server controls inside the grid and the values are dynamically binding along with
summary section at the top of the page.
User enters value in text box, the page will get reloads. If user place the cursor on
some other text box or tab it, after page reloads the focus should be in the text box
where the user placed the cursor.
Getting knowledge on the Domain.
Key benefits
Most of the applications are running as batch process and works
automatically.
Old applications are converted to .Net 4.0 framework.
Associates involved in the project
Onsite:
1. Raajagopal Srinivasan
2. Chittilapilly Anoop-George
Offshore:
1. Sivasubramaniam Dhilip Kumar
2. Srinivasan Vasantharaj
3. Soni Rahul
4. Rajendran Dhiyaneshwaran
5. Hussain Dawood
17
TIBCO Support
Business Unit:
ASP – BPI
Customer Contact
McClure, Tim
Project description
One of North America’s largest energy suppliers of electricity, gas and related home
services.
Market leader in providing utility based services targeting the residential and commercial
customers.
The goal of the project is to build and implement a single standard architecture for all
integration solution is required for the Client’s Business need
Integrate many messages from different Applications, Trading Partners involved in
enrollment process and other promotion features of our Client
Technology used:
TIBCO BW 5.6
TIBCO EMS 5.1
TIBCO BC 5.2
Oracle 11G
Key challenges/Learnings
This project provides solution to cover all the enrollment process, adherence to
market and promotional offers to customers
Timely response on the market transaction issues and resolve them within market
SLA timeframe
Maintenance and monitoring the systems to ensure that any abnormal behavior is
identified and fixed without impacting the deadlines.
Reduced time on enhancement supports by making the changes more generic and
less impacts to other interacting systems
Provides a clear model to integrate software systems inside the enterprise (entities
and sites) and across organizational boundaries with organizations
Key benefits
A highly robust and scalable integration platform for integration between
systems
Clear visibility on the monitoring and tracking the market transactions
Enhanced Efficiency by reducing Manual intervention across failure points with the
introduction of reconciliation process
Stabilization of production interfaces by drilling down the issue root case and
provide permanent solution
Proactive monitoring on the production components and effective action prior to
the customer impact thru alerting
Associates involved in the project
Onsite:
Satish Bhamidipati
19
Business Unit: EIM
Customer Contact: Venkatraman Siva
Project description
1. Includes ETL scripts related to the following applications
Scripts are executed through jobs scheduled in Control-M scheduling application
There is no monitoring requirement to check status on Control M. In case of
failures/issues, an automated email notification is sent to the support team for
subsequent action
The jobs run Monday-Friday in the week. No weekend run/support required
Development and Enhancement of SSIS packages and SSRS/BOBJ reports
2. Corrective maintenance & Production Support of SSIS jobs and packages for the listed
applications
3. Monitor all error notifications and take actions if needed OR involve appropriate groups
accordingly. Resolution time would vary based on the criticality of failure from same day
to 1-2 business days
4. Communicate issues/resolution options/other required actions directly with DE business
teams over email. If required coordinate with DE business analyst for resolution
5. Analyzing the ticket, and work with Direct Energy DBA support team to perform any
configuration related work around to the issue reported.
6. Perform root cause analysis to provide a permanent fix to the issue
7. Continue to identify areas of improvements for optimizing performance
8. Documentation updates of all program specifications and business analysis documents
will be completed by Cognizant based on those programs that Cognizant and Direct
Energy change as a part of the application support.
9. Work on new enhancements/changes as requested
10. In addition, when there is no job failure related activities, the resources can be utilized
for other ETL related work as assigned by DE SMEs
11. Follow the software lifecycle model to handle the development projects and change
request requirements.
12. Provide support for any environment migration with the DBA team.
Technology used:
Item Name Software
Operating System HPUX, Windows
Database Oracle 10g, SQL server
Application Server IIS
Technologies Microsoft SSIS, SSRS and SAP BO 4.0
Tools SVN, TFS, PL/SQL developer, Eclipse,
Visual studio, MS Office
Key benefits
Many process which were manual are now made automatic
20
Key challenges/Learnings
Getting knowledge of all the applications
Associates involved in the project
Onsite:
Sriram VenkataKrishnan
Offshore:
Sivalingam Prakash
Sminju Samuel
Chandramouli
Gokulakrishanan
Janarthanan
Vivek
Further readings
21
US North Production Support
Business Unit:
MLEU
Customer Contact
Scott Choddor
Project description
One of North America’s largest energy suppliers of electricity, gas and related home
services.
Market leader in providing utility based services targeting the residential and commercial
customers.
We perform Production Support activities for the IT team of the US North Production
Support team based in Tulsa. Activities supported by us include Customer Enrollments,
Billing and Invoicing, POR/NON-POR Payment Posting, Letter Writer, CRT, Reports and
other processes. We have also built several helper applications with the aim of cutting
down the number of support tickets we get weekly and have had great success with it
too.
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is the format we follow in this project for file
transactions.
Technology used
VB .Net2.0/ 3.5, SQL Server 2008 R2, EDI, DevEx Controls, Crystal Reports
Key challenges/Learnings
We work on almost all areas of Production Support but the key challenge that we
have faced is customer's reluctance to expand in the area of Development due to two
reasons.
1. The development center is Montebello and customer wants all Development
work to be done there only.
2. Budgetary constraints do not allow for increasing headcount in the project in
the short/long term.
Key benefits
A highly robust and scalable integration platform for integration between
systems
Clear visibility on the monitoring and tracking the market transactions
We have value adds in the application which reduces user manual work
tremendously
Associates involved in the project
Onsite:
Aaruni Upadhyay
23
Encore
Business Unit:
MLEU
Customer Contact
Cindy Farley
Project description
Encore is a windows application that is primarily used for proposal management of
Natural gas customers. It interfaces with Apollo which is an application used for maintaining
existing customers and their active deals. Proposals created for prospect customers are moved
to Apollo once they are converted to active deals by which the prospect customers become
actual customers. Proposals of both prospect and non-prospects customers are renewed
automatically by the system on a daily basis in Encore. Encore was initially called as Customer
renewals. The basic functionality of Encore was to renew deals and create prospect customers
in Apollo. A proposal is created for an existing customer whose deal is going to expire or for a
new customer. Renew proposals are done for an existing customer / Active Deal.
Technology used:
Visual Studio 2010, VB.NET
CSLA
OpenXML
Sql Server 2008
Key benefits
Proposal creation has done only for retail customers
Confirmed proposals only moved to Apollo, which reduces overhead of billing
application(Apollo) to maintain deals and proposals
Customer setup done in Encore so the billing application don’t want to maintain
customers info
Various types of proposals and deal sheets can be created with the help of Encore,
which reduces the effort of sales representative to arrive many proposals for one
customer before make it to deal
Key challenges/Learnings
This project provides solution to cover all the enrollment process for customers
Business rules are clearly defined with the help of open source component CSLA
Reduces the overhead of billing application to maintain customer and proposals info.
24
Reduced time on enhancement supports by making the changes more generic and
less impacts to other interacting systems
Associates involved in the project
Onsite:
N Sudarshanan
Offshore:
S Thanigaivel
M Murali
E Swathi
Further readings
25
Genesis
Business Unit:
MLEU
Customer Contact
Padmaja Boppana
Project description
Direct Energy needed an integrated system that is robust and user friendly to
handle their day to day operations like Pricing and Proposal generation. Genesis is a
Proposal Management System and acts as a common platform for the below four groups
Sales Support, Electric OPS, Wholesale Desk and Contract Admin, Support User. Its
functionalities are like Proposal workflow management for tracking purposes, Defined
process across all the involved teams, complete system automation, Flexibility to configure
the pricing module, Configurable user roles and rights management. The project
development was completed over a period of 3 months with 7 resources at offshore and 1
resource at onsite. The application moved to production in September 2009.
Technology used:
Item Name Software
Operating System Windows
Database SQL server
Application Server IIS
Technologies .Net 4.0,ASP.Net, VB.Net, WCF,
NHibernate, MVC, HTML ,JavaScript,
JSON,MS SQL 2008,Enterprise Library
Open XML
Tools Visual Studio 2010,SQL Server 2008
Key benefits
Proposal creation has been done for Retail and also Wholesale Customers
Initiation of price request (Both New and Renew) and workflow
Price is forwarded to the customer for approval
Forwarding the confirmation to Electric OPS for finalization after obtaining
approval from the customer
Forwarding any supporting documents to Electric OPS and Contract Admin
for closure of the workflow
26
Performing hedging for finalized proposals
Validating the workflow and providing comments
Key challenges/Learnings
This project is using the latest version of .net and other technologies.
Proposed various enhancements that lead to both performance improvement as well
as customer satisfaction.
Associates involved in the project
Onsite:
Vijayakanthan Vijayakumar
Amaresh Narayanappa
Baalaji Govindaraj
Offshore:
Vaishnav Kasi
Meganathan
Jessica Neena
Renuka
Hariharan Packirisamy
Veeramuthu Prabhu
Balaji Murugan
Kumaresan D
KarthikKumarsha
Dinesh
Further readings
27
Cognizant Initiatives
Below is some important list of innovation that cognizant did for DE Projects,
DE-Product Analytics Dashboard: Texas being a regulated market Direct Energy was
designing and launching many innovative products to attract more customers through different
programs. Incremental addition of new product offerings leads to the following problems in
managing them. To resolve this team came up with a Dashboard to provide a consolidated view
using Vertical Coordinates Chart from Visualization platform. This dashboard process the data
of all launched products and attributes to make a simple summary to the end user for taking
necessary actions.
Customer Churn Analytics: DE faced with increased customer attrition and needed to identify
key parameters affecting customer churn for each business division. Customer churn is the loss
of customers who may leave based on a number of reasons including pricing issues, new
Product Offerings, Automatic Contract Renewals customer service, competitor Offers .To
analyze the above trends we developed a multivariate analytical model which will be used for
future churn prediction also identify the key drivers of churn in each business division using
delivery, assurances, billing data and satisfaction data
List of innovation that cognizant did for DE Projects in the year 2014
Cognizant_Inovation_Initiatives_2014.xls